New Ultimate Star Wars VR Experience Brings C3PO and R2-D2 to Your Home

Get ready for the ultimate Star Wars virtual reality experience, as Lucasfilm has just teamed up with VR company Magic Leap to create an immersive "mixed reality" that brings your favorite droids (minus BB-8, for now) right into your living room.

Last year, Lucasfilm launched the ILMxLab, which aimed to reinvent the wheel of storytelling through experimentation with immersive platforms. Now, ILMxLab and Magic Leap have created a demo for their Star Wars augmented reality technology, which shows R2-D2 and C3PO discussing Jabba the Hutt and fretting about an army of Stormtroopers right in front of you.

The technology was previewed at Wired's Business Conference today, although there's still no word on when it will be available to consumers. However, the disclaimer states that no digital effects were used in the video, that this video was taken directly from their VR headset. So judging from this demo, it's not just a pipe dream; the technology is well on its way.

The question is: what exactly will it be used for? The ILMxLab seemed to be primarily focused on VR games, which would make the most sense for consumer products and movie tie-ins. (Although I'm sure most Star Wars fans wouldn't object to just having Star Wars droids around as intangible buddies.) In the future, Lucasfilm has promised that we will get to wield lightsabers and explore Star Wars worlds for ourselves, and this demo seems to be a huge step towards fulfilling that promise.